Rosa Luxemburg, (born March 5, 1871, Zamość, Pol., Russian Empire—died Jan. 15, 1919, Berlin, Ger.), Polish-born German political radical, intellectual, and author. As a Jew in Russian-controlled Poland, she was drawn early into underground political activism. In 1889 she fled to Zürich, Switz., where she obtained her doctorate. Having become involved in the international socialist movement, in 1892 she cofounded what would become the Polish Communist Party. The Russian Revolution of 1905 convinced her that the world revolution would originate in Russia. She advocated the mass strike as the proletariat’s most important tool. Imprisoned in Warsaw for agitation, she then moved to Berlin to teach and write (1907–14). Early in World War I she cofounded the Spartacus League (see Spartacists), and in 1918 she oversaw its transformation into the German Communist Party; she was murdered during the Spartacus Revolt less than a month later. She believed in a democratic path to socialism after a world revolution to overthrow capitalism and opposed what she recognized as Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s emerging dictatorship.
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capitalism Summary
Capitalism, economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets. Although the continuous development of capitalism as a system
Marxism Summary
Marxism, a body of doctrine developed by Karl Marx and, to a lesser extent, by Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th century. It originally consisted of three related ideas: a philosophical anthropology, a theory of history, and an economic and political program. There is also Marxism as it has been
socialism Summary
Socialism, social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people